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In transmitting President Richard Nixon's orders for a "massive" bombing of Cambodia in 1969, Henry Kissinger said, &...

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Monday, January 18, 2010

Here is the news: a snowflake has fallen in High Wycombe by Mark Steel

Even the financial news has been about the weather's impact on business

We've gone mad again. For a whole week every news report has begun with some idiot in a field saying something like, "As you can see, here in Wiltshire the snow has literally COVERED MY SHOELACE. And it's not just snowed in this field, it's snowed in that one over there as well. So there is literally no escape."

Then it goes back to the studio and we're told, "The police are strongly advising everyone not to get off their settee unless it's absolutely essential, and if you do insist on going to the toilet, make sure you take a Thermos of soup, a blanket and a gun. They also say anyone who goes outside is guaranteed to die."

Then comes a graph displaying coldness through history, as an expert tells us, "If you look at the siege of Stalingrad, at least they had periods of thawing in the areas where the Germans burned things down, but for us, no such respite I'm afraid."

One night the snow dominated the first 20 minutes of the news, until they went on to a story about Afghanistan. But even then you expected them to say "Joining us live is John Simpson from Kabul. John, how's the snow there?"

"Well Huw, it's not too bad here but the Met Office has issued severe warnings for Helmand Province and is advising people not to travel there unless your journey is absolutely necessary."

Even the financial news was about the snow's impact on business, until it seemed they'd say, "There was little movement in the money markets today, as no transactions by computer were possible as the internet has simply become too icy."

If this had gone on any longer a group of African pop stars would have made an Ice Aid charity song for us, that started "We're sending you our grit, As we really can't just sit, And watch you die out like the dinosaur because it's minus four."

And yet there really wasn't that much snow, and hardly anywhere was it as deadly as they were predicting. Several times I saw an outside reporter telling us, "Just a few essential items are getting through here," while behind them a road was functioning perfectly normally.

One day they kept going to a reporter in High Wycombe, where it wasn't snowing at all, and asking him, "Is it snowing yet?" "Not yet", he said, which provoked questions along the lines of, "But if a disruptive level of snow were to fall, presumably that would be disruptive, wouldn't it?" The reporter might as well have said, "Also I can tell you no volcanoes have erupted here either, but if one does erupt it could mean High Wycombe gets literally covered in lava, and that could make shopping very difficult indeed."

So you become numb to it all, and for all I remember the next night's news started with an announcement that the four horsemen of the apocalypse have issued a statement denying their involvement: "Even we wouldn't consider coming before this unprecedented lengthy cold snap. Pestilence is one thing, but we've seen a man in a Toyota literally sliding across his driveway."

But it's hard not to get taken in. When the news, the reliable source of all worldly information, tells you earnestly all day that the country's suffocating from fearsome levels of snow, you feel it must be true even as you look out of the window and see most people pottering about as normal in a couple of inches of the stuff. And this is why the Iraq inquiry should have begun its questioning of Alastair Campbell by talking about the snow.

Because it's not so much the individual distortions, exaggerations and twisted statistics that mislead an entire population, it's the atmosphere created when all of these are knitted together into a relentless assault of statements, dossiers, speeches and headlines.

For example, when every news channel repeats all day every day that a dictator is planning to attack us with weapons that can be launched in 45 minutes, and there is "no doubt, no doubt at all" about this, even the most sceptical start to think there must be something in it. Which is why it got to a point where Colin Powell could present a photo showing Saddam's hidden missiles, and lots of us said, "Oh yes there they are", when there was absolutely nothing there at all.

So the most worrying part of the week's TV snow mania was when they kept telling us, "the Army is on stand-by." Because from the Government's recent military record, if the Army was sent in to deal with the weather, they'd get bogged down until July. Then they'd demand another 10,000 troops, and it would all come unstuck when they were forced to investigate a regiment caught torturing snowmen with a blow-lamp.

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"A petty reason perhaps why novelists more and more try to keep a distance from journalists is that novelists are trying to write the truth and journalists are trying to write fiction." Graham Greene

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Journalists and Writers I Like.

"Bread and work and love, the poor man’s trinity, and by all three needs they chain him down." Christina Stead 1902-1983 Seven Poor Men of Sydney

"Every government is run by liars and nothing should be believed." I.F.Stone 1907-89

"I have made more friends for American culture than the State Department. Certainly I have made fewer enemies, but that isn't very difficult." Arthur Miler 1915-2005

"In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act." George Orwell 1903-50

"It is not enough for journalists to see themselves as mere messengers without understandig the hidden agendas of the message that surrounds it." John Pilger

"Lots of people who complained about us receiving the MBE received theirs for heroism in the war - for killing people. We received ours for entertaining other people. I'd say we deserve ours more." Joesph Heller 1923-99

"Media is just a word that has come to mean bad journalism." Graham Greene 1904-91

"My experience in the First World War and now the Second World War [his son Barney was killed in the Battle of Singapore] changed my outlook on things. It is hard to believe that there is a God. I feel the Bible is a book written by man but for the purpose of preying on a person’s conscience, and to confuse him. Anyone who taken part in a bayonet charge (and I have) [Gallipoli], and has managed to retain his proper senses, must doubt the truth of the Bible and the powers of God, if one exists. And considering the many hundreds of different religions that there are in this world of ours, and the fact that many religions have caused terrible wars and hatreds throughout the world, and that many religions that have hoarded tremendous wealth and property while people inside and outside religion are starving , it is difficult to remain a believer. No Sir, there is no God, it is only a myth." Albert Facey 1894-1982 A Fortunate Life

"Now take my case. I’m twenty-nine and have two brothers—one in the Liberal Party and one serving six years for rape and arson. My sister Peg is on the streets and Dad lives off her earnings. Mum is pregnant by the boarder and because of this Dad won’t marry her. Last night I got engaged to an ex-prostitute and I wish to be fair to her: should I tell her about my brother in the Liberal Party." David Ireland 1927- The Unknown Industrial Prisoner

"Prime Minster Howard I’ve heard You met George Bush and the Pope too, I understand, Oh I liked the Pope much better, I only had to kiss his hand." L’Amour Denis Kevans 1939-2005

"The first law of journalism-to confirm existing prejudice rather than contradict it." Alexander Cockburn

"The Labour Party [ALP], starting with a band of inspired Socialists, degenerated into a vast machine for capturing political power, but did not know how to use the power when attained except for the profit of individuals[...] Such is the history of all Labour organisations in Australia, and not because they are Australian , but because they are Labour..." Victor Gordon Childe 1892-1957, How Labour Governs

"The trouble with a free market economy is that it requires so many policemen to make it work." Neal Ascherson, 1932- Games with the Shadows, Policing the Marketplace.

"The trouble with America is that when the dollar only earns 6 percent over here, then it gets restless and goes overseas to get 100 percent. Then the flag follows the dollar and the soldiers follow the flag. I wouldn't go to war again as I have done to protect some lousy investment of the bankers. There are only two things we should fight for. One is the defense of our homes and the other is the Bill of Rights. War for any other reason is simply a racket. There isn't a trick in the racketeering bag that the military gang is blind to. It has its "finger men" to point out enemies, its "muscle men" to destroy enemies, its "brain men" to plan war preparations, and a "Big Boss" Super-Nationalistic-Capitalism. It may seem odd for me, a military man to adopt such a comparison. Truthfulness compels me to. I spent thirty- three years and four months in active military service as a member of this country's most agile military force, the Marine Corps. I served in all commissioned ranks from Second Lieutenant to Major-General. And during that period, I spent most of my time being a high class muscle- man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. " Major General Smedley Butler,1881-1940

"What is the crime of robbing a bank compared with the crime of founding one." Bertolt Brecht 1898-1956

"Who is more to be pitied, a writer bound and gagged by policemen or one living in perfect freedom who has nothing more to say?" Kurt Vonnegut 1922-2007

[Battler]" a conscientious person working against many odds to make a living; one whose life is a constant struggle.’ Battlers maybe men or women; black or white. They rarely deal with racism (the negative side of our tradition) because they sympathise with anyone facing adversity or unfair criticism. The term ‘battler’ is a state of mind-a traditional attitude which goes back to the convict era, when the battler was on a flogging to nothing but fiddled around the rules and held his masters in contempt. The battlers are aware that they are being lied to by....politicians; and they suspect that Keating’s warning that Australia could become a banana republic is in fact, happening before their eyes." Frank Hardy 1917-1994. Retreat Australia Fair 1990

I don't respect the law; I have a total irreverence for anything connected with society except that which makes the roads safer, the beer stronger, the food cheaper and the old men and old women warmer in the winter and happier in the summer. Brendan Behan 1923-64

“I do what I do, and write what I write, without calculating what is worth what and so on. Fortunately, I am not a banker or an accountant. I feel that there is a time when a political statement needs to be made and I make it.” Arundhati Roy